Kakao co-CEO resigns after mass outage locked 53 million users out

Whon Namkoong, co-chief executive officer of Kakao Corp., speaks during a news conference in in Pangyo, South Korea, on Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2022. Namkoong resigned after a widespread outage took out Koreas most popular messaging and social media service. Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The operator of South Korea's top mobile messenger will lose a top executive. A fire at a data center caused a mass outage over the weekend and disrupted services for 53 million users.

The co-CEO apologized and said he would step down.

The CEO of the company said at a press conference on Wednesday that he would step down from his position and lead the emergency disaster task force after the accident.

He said that they would do their best to restore users' faith in the company.

The company's website states that the CEO was named in March. During the second quarter, the company reported over 45 million active users in Korea. The population of South Korea is more than 50 million.

Hong Eun-taek will remain the sole head of the company.

Hong and Namkoong bowed their heads as they apologized to those who had been disrupted.

Ahead of the press conference, shares of the company were 4% higher.

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